Compared to what’s happening to people [… put your place here], animals are nothing, uh? So we should take care of people in [… put your place here], and let all species die? Pope BXVI would be proud of you.
Marco

At least charges are being pressed there. AFAIK, nobody has been charged or arrested in the bear slaughter in eastern Russia at all yet, particularly the one that was on a reservation being closely observed in a long-term study by zoologists.
And there the slaughter happens because people *still* think that bear gall bladders actually have curative properties. No proof, just a thousand year old wives tale that people are willing to pay money to continue to believe in…

By the time the human race passes into extinction any non-domesticated animal that can fill a cooking pot will be long since extinct. Anything larger than a rabbit in Virunga is probably disappearing into the bushmeat trade right now. We’re slowly and surely sawing off the branch we’re sitting on.

By the time the human race passes into extinction any non-domesticated animal that can fill a cooking pot will be long since extinct. Anything larger than a rabbit in Virunga is probably disappearing into the bushmeat trade right now. We’re slowly and surely sawing off the branch we’re sitting on.

The tragedies occurring in places like the Congo, Darfur, and Tibet are indeed horrible. That, however does not diminish, nor should it, the heinous nature of this story. Nor does my horror at this story diminish the pain and suffering of people around the world. It seems to me that some of you are saying that the human heart isn’t large enough to feel sad at the suffering of both humans and animals. I happen to think it is. I also think that this is not an either/or situation.

I think that the killings in Darfur, Congo, Tibet, et al are ghastly. The deliberate killings of gorillas, or bears, or whatever, in places where they’re supposed to be protected, are ghastly, too. And both kinds of killings diminish us, as human beings. We’re supposed to be better than that. But many of us obviously don’t strive to be.
Anne G

I think that the killings in Darfur, Congo, Tibet, et al are ghastly. The deliberate killings of gorillas, or bears, or whatever, in places where they’re supposed to be protected, are ghastly, too. And both kinds of killings diminish us, as human beings. We’re supposed to be better than that. But many of us obviously don’t strive to be.
Anne G

Again bwv; why? Because “man” is more important than other species? Or millions (thousands, hundreds, tens…) of men are more important than some gorillas? What is there, an onthological qualitative jump (just as the actual pope said, mind you) between us and them? Please explain the proportionality.

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"You may not be willing to admit that you resemble an ape; if your thousandth ancestor is more like an ape than you are, you may, if you wish, call it a coincidence. But if that thousandth ancestor's forebears become progressively more simian as you trace back the geneological lines, you will have to admit that somewhere in your family tree there squats an ape." Earnest Hooten

Charles Darwin

"But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian." Charles Darwin: The Autobiography